The present invention relates to interactive systems for presenting and eliminating substances in liquids. Furthermore, the invention relates to devices manufactured with these interactive systems such as for example capillary tube systems, fiber material for filtering physiological liquids, filter mats, arthroplasties or vascular prostheses, etc.
For a number of purposes it is often necessary to eliminate specific substances from a liquid or to present substances in a liquid.
For instance, physiologically active substances are frequently coupled with polyalkylene glycols, e.g. polyethylene glycol, in order to increase the molecular weight and thus improve the pharmacokinetics in the body (cf. e.g. Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 77 (1), 168-73 (1997), Peptide Research, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1995)). Such substances are widely used in therapy nowadays. So far, for such substances no effective functional antidotes, or systems which neutralize their effects, i.e. systems for eliminating these substances, are available.
During serious diseases, cellular signal substances from a functional disorder are often passed into the bloodstream, which enables these cellular signal factors to spread rapidly to any part of the body. This can cause both useful responses by the organism to such signals, but also frequently pathological ones. By neutralizing or blocking these pathogenic factors, a disease can be interrupted or the progress of a disease can be warded off so that the body's own repair mechanisms are given the opportunity to intervene.
Typical examples of such signal substances are the cellular messengers of the endothelial and circulating blood cells such as e.g. CD1, CD2, CD6, CD8, CD16, tumor necrosis factor (TNF) etc. Induced proteins which are pathogenically significant such as e.g. the lipoprotein-binding protein LBP are also responsible for the development of extremely serious complications with patients in septic shock.
It would be important to be able to gently eliminate such substances via an extracorporal therapeutic system without burdening the organism with further substances. Furthermore, it would be advantageous to treat certain diseases with systems for presenting monoclonal antibodies or fragments of these monoclonal antibodies. At this time, such a therapy is only possible for a limited period of time since the immunocompetent cells of the organism quickly produce human antibodies against these foreign proteins. A local presentation of such monoclonal antibodies in the blood circulation can be applied to neutralize antigens in the blood for a long time without causing any immunoreactivity.
Moreover, it is often desirable to eliminate certain ingredients in foodstuffs, such as e.g. cholesterol, certain fatty acids, alcohol, impurities of a microbial or bacterial nature etc. gently and easily, for instance in order to produce specific foods for special dietary requirements.